Joint Multistatic Sensing of Transmitter and Target in OFDM-Based JCAS System

Joint communication and sensing (JCAS) systems use the same spectrum, hardware and antenna resources to jointly provide spectrally efficient communication, localization and sensing services. While previous work has analyzed the performance of communication with connected objects and localization of unconnected (passive) objects, the joint positioning of both connected and passive objects is less studied. In this paper, we consider a JCAS cellular system using orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing, in which the uplink communication signal is scattered on a moving target towards multiple receiving base stations. In this setting, multistatic sensing by cooperating base stations makes it possible to position the moving target while also positioning the transmitting user equipment based on the received communication signal at the base stations. We propose a channel model that can characterize the propagation of both the communication and sensing signals, and algorithms that facilitate the estimation of direction of arrivals and range, which in turn enables the system to infer the positions of both the communicating user and the passive target. We also show some illustrative results from the algorithms that indicate what such joint positioning practically can look like.